Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

Remember games like Sonic the Hedgehog, TMNT, Kid Chameleon, or even Mario? Yeah, well we haven't seen a game like those in awhile (especially a 2D one) and that's what makes 'Splosion Man so great. It brings back that classic challenging platformer goodness with a great sense of humor, and a loving character. 'Splosion Man pits you against a bunch of mad scientists obstacles and traps trying to capture while you run rampant trying to escape.

As the name implies you have the ability to explode, but not just as many times as you want. You can explode three times in a row then you must "recharge" yourself by staying on the ground for a few seconds or clinging to a wall. Exploding allows you to jump, break glass, hit switches, and pretty much do anything because this is the core gameplay. You have different obstacles to overcome such as jumping gaps; you may need a green canister to shoot you across a huge gap, exploding barrels will give you a slight boost since there may be huge open areas above a death pit that are just barrels. The idea would be to explode yourself on each barrel and "hop" across the huge gap. Most of the time scientists will pull levers that block your way and you must solve how to get to them. Giant closing walls may come down on you from either side and you'll need to jump your way up and out. You may run across electrified fields, and you must find the switch to turn them off, then you can kill the scientist and be on your marry way. There are dozens of different traps and obstacles and it would take forever to describe them all, but one thing is for certain and it's that you need to use your exploding powers to get through them.

When it comes to boss fights they are epic and rather tough. They all involve some form of exploding and evading which must be mastered. That's the beauty of this game; you can conquer the controls, but it takes practice to master them. The later levels require precise jumping, exploding, and timing or you will meet your death. Speaking of death (unlike older platformers) checkpoints are fair and plentiful so you are sure not to get to frustrated. Trial and error here is abundant, but it's forgiving. What I mainly love about the character you play are the noises he makes. He runs around looking goofier than ever making airplane noises, barking noises, and just overall maniacal laughs that make you laugh every time. The achievements on the the other hand are pretty easy to get and take a bit of thinking to figure out. Most of them require finishing certain objectives and some require finding hidden items. Like any platformer the game has impossible to find items and these are cakes. Yes they even make a joke about the Portal reference in the achievement description. Hell, there's even a real life 'Splosion Man video during the credits roll. Speaking of that the game has a great co-op play both online and off so you and a friend can master the power of exploding. You even unlock a theme and gamer picture for all your effort.

So to conclude, 'Splosion Man is a fine platformer which does something original that we have never seen before. Whether it's the epic boss fights, the ability to explode, or the levels that just make you feel giddy 'Splosion is worth every penny and will hopefully make an explosive sequel.